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Unrest in Iraq

U.S. airstrikes hit militants

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoKhalid Mohammed | Associated PressKurdish fighters take cover during U.S. airstrikes. The airstrikes yesterday targeted Islamic State militants near the Khazer checkpoint outside the city of Irbil in northern Iraq.

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IRBIL, Iraq — American warplanes and drones struck Islamist militants near this northern Iraqi
city yesterday, putting the U.S. military back in action in the skies over Iraq less than three
years after the troops withdrew and President Barack Obama declared the war over.

The strikes were limited in scope but helped temper days of building panic across the north of
the country as militants with the extremist Islamic State sliced through towns and villages on the
outskirts of the Kurdish region and sent civilians fleeing for their lives.

They also presented the first significant challenge to unchecked expansion by the al-Qaida
offshoot, which has swept through much of Iraq and neighboring Syria over the past year,
annihilating its opponents, capturing valuable resources and declaring the creation of an Islamic
caliphate.

In Washington, the Pentagon announced three airstrikes against militant positions that it said
were firing on Kurdish forces protecting Irbil, saying they had “successfully eliminated”
artillery, a mortar position and a convoy of extremist fighters.

Kurdish media and officials, who said the attacks had had a “devastating” impact on militant
positions, claimed other, unconfirmed attacks.

U.S. officials also stressed that the American intervention was narrowly aimed at the protection
of American officials in Irbil, where the U.S. consulate has been swelled by evacuees from the
embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. military runs a joint operations center.

“There are American military and diplomatic personnel in Irbil,” White House spokesman Josh
Earnest said. “The protection of American personnel in Iraq is a top priority.”

He emphasized that the authorization for airstrikes “is very limited in scope” but did not rule
out that there might be additional strikes to protect the tens of thousands of members of the
minority Yazidi faith trapped by Islamic State fighters on a mountaintop.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki requested the U.S. intervention, Earnest said.
But he and other U.S. officials made clear that more comprehensive U.S. engagement in the battle
against the militants will not happen unless feuding politicians in Baghdad establish a more
inclusive government.

The Iraqi parliament is scheduled to choose a new prime minister, perhaps on Sunday, according
to U.S. officials.

The first of the airstrikes came in the early afternoon — dawn Washington time — and were
carried out by two F/A-18 combat jets flying from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush.

The aircraft dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery piece that had been
shelling Kurdish positions, the Pentagon said. The strike occurred in Makhmour, a town southwest of
Irbil, according to Mahmood Haji, an official at the Kurdish Interior Ministry.

Two more announced strikes came in late afternoon, Iraq time. An MQ-1 Predator drone armed with
Hellfire missiles struck an Islamic State mortar position. When fighters returned to the site
moments later, “the terrorists were attacked again and successfully eliminated,” according to
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby.

Less than an hour later, aircraft dropped eight laser-guided bombs on a convoy and a mortar
position nearby, the Pentagon said. Those strikes took place near the Khazer checkpoint on the road
between Mosul and Irbil, according to Haji, the Kurdish official.

Jihadist fighters and supporters took to Twitter to express glee that the United States had
become embroiled in their battle. They threatened to shoot down planes, exact revenge and conquer
other American allies elsewhere in the region.

“This crisis will become a gift, and you shall remember this: Our State will enter Irbil and
America will fall, and then the Gulf will be ours,” one purported jihadi tweeted.

“Your announcements do not scare us; the biggest enemy of the State is the Americans,” another
said.

Obama authorized the strikes in response to a powerful Islamic State offensive launched a week
ago across northern Iraq, in which towns and villages occupied mainly by members of Iraq’s ancient
Christian minority, as well as the Yazidis, have been overrun.

At the same time, he dispatched U.S. military aircraft to drop food and water to the besieged
Yazidis, who fled the town of Sinjar to a nearby mountain to escape the advancing militants. Obama
said airstrikes might also be used to break the militant siege of the mountaintop, if Kurdish
forces are unable to do so.

After weeks of appealing to the United States for arms and ammunition to help in the fight
against militants, Kurdish officials expressed gratitude for the intervention.

“We never lost hope that our friends would come when the circumstances were there,” former Iraqi
foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari told a news conference in Irbil.

He said the strikes had made a significant impact on the ground and would enable Kurd-

ish forces to regain the ground they have lost to the extremists.

“Our intelligence … is that it has been a devastating blow” to the militants, Zebari said. “
Commanders have seen dramatic changes on the front lines. … We have already seen some
withdrawals."

Whether strikes limited to the northeastern edge of the vast territory controlled by the Islamic
State will impact its control elsewhere is in question.

Response to the strikes was limited from Congress, which is in the midst of a late-summer
recess. While most who offered an opinion supported Obama’s decision, some Republicans criticized
him for waiting too long.

Three main factors motivated Obama’s decision to authorize the airstrikes and humanitarian
airdrops, which were executed for the second straight night last night, Earnest said. Those factors
were the “deeply disturbing” situation at Mount Sinjar, reports that Islamic State insurgents were
advancing toward Irbil, and the progress that Iraqi politicians have made in forming a new
government after months of stalemate.

He did not offer a specific date” on when the campaign would end, but he reiterated Obama’s
pledge that the U.S. “will not be dragged back into a prolonged military conflict in Iraq” and that
ground troops will not be involved.